


Fairy Tale

by sasha_b



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-25
Updated: 2011-06-25
Packaged: 2017-10-20 17:12:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/215111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sasha_b/pseuds/sasha_b
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Trust, implicit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fairy Tale

**Author's Note:**

> For this prompt: _Erik had to harden himself in self-defense under the torture of Shaw and so locked many, if not all, of his early childhood memories and memories of his mother away. After that first time when Charles unlocks the memory of his birthday, Erik comes to Charles again and asks for help to remember his mother and his childhood again.  
>  Charles could, of course, never say no._

Erik stays outside for a long while; the sun has set hours ago and the chill has seeped through the woods to the mansion and through his thin clothing and bones. He shivers but ignores it, leaning over the edge of the iron fence that surrounds Charles’ property. He can feel the pebbles under his shoes (tennis shoes, weird American trend; not what he’s used to, but Charles felt it appropriate for them to appear _unified_ ) and watches the stream of fog that issues via short huffed breaths from his chapped lips.

He can feel Charles rattling around in his brain before he sees him, and shakes his head as the other man – clad in classic _old fart_ pajamas and a thick Scottish wool cardigan – appears at his elbow.

They lean in silence for moments, Erik comfortable, used to, _never expecting anything else_ his silence, Charles most probably feeling a million questions that he’s afraid to voice. No, not afraid – Erik doesn’t get that sense from him often – but wary. As if he doesn’t want to hurt Erik, couldn’t bear it, wouldn’t want to turn Erik’s tiny fraction of trust (so odd) into fear or worse, anger.

 _What do you know about me?_

 _Everything._

“Why are you waiting, Charles?”

His voice is weary, resigned. He’s exhausted from the day’s events; memories pulled from him he didn’t even remember having, the stress of the statement from the President, the gun. He chews on his bottom lip and thinks about the gun, now sitting in his top dresser drawer, waiting for further use. Turning his head, Erik eyes Charles out of his strained green/blue eyes – some sort of mutant color, he’s sure, although Charles hasn’t tried to fill him in on that yet – and raises an eyebrow, taut.

“I want you to ask me.”

“What if I don’t want to?”

Xavier, hands in his pockets, turns his gaze to Erik and the fastidiousness of his motions, no wasted breaths or movement or speech, is almost a balm to Erik, who’s become so used to watching others and reading them, violence in everything they do and are, devouring their desires and thoughts in his own way. He has spent the last month or so with this man, and yet - _you’re not alone._

The night birds call and he stands up straight, resting his right hip on the fence as he faces Charles. “What if I want to see if you can ‘stretch yourself,’ Charles?” He laughs with the words, a terrifying smirk crossing his pointed features. “You know everything about me, after all.”

His ire drains quickly, like the last of the water going down the drain in the shower he’d taken that morning – a large, clean bathtub and efficient, beautiful features, nothing he’s ever had, nothing he should be used to – he can’t be angry with Charles. The lights of the menorah are still bright in his mind, still a soothing presence that no matter of hours spent on thinking of his mother’s dead body, crumpled on the floor, on her pale face, on her tremulous voice that said _everything will be fine_ until the moment Shaw took her can dampen his joy at the thing Charles has done for him.

He wants more of it.

“I know you do,” Charles says, his clear voice a bell in the soft night. He takes another step toward Erik, the gravel crunching under his feet. “You don’t have to ask, Erik. I would do it for you again even if you never asked.”

He smiles then, and Erik can’t help but smile in return; not the curving, knife sharp, teeth baring half circle of before, but a tender, creeping wondrous thing he’s partially afraid of.

For a moment thinks he should be angry with Charles for seeming to read his thoughts without permission. But then he wonders if he’s projecting loud enough for both of them – for any telepath in the vicinity – to hear, and he brushes the thought away. He has the power to bend metal to his will, to kill men and to take what he wants when he wants it, and he could kill Charles Xavier if he wanted to. He has no reason to fear. But…for once in his life _you’re not alone_ he realizes the difference between this man and the others that have gone through his life at his whims.

This one he would die to protect, not the other way around. And that is the scariest thing he can possibly imagine.

“Do it,” he says simply, and closes his eyes, waiting, tensing, still afraid to find out what he’s forgotten after all this time.

He can hear Charles take the last step that separates them, can hear the rustle as the other man raises his hand to his temple, and does not jerk when Charles wraps his other hand gently – lightly – around Erik’s right wrist. The contact is unexpected, but –

He would have thought the memories would flood him, would burst through the steel dam he’s built over so many years of _rage and pain that had done the job so far, Charles_ but instead, it’s just one particular thing that surfaces, and he gasps without meaning to, his eyes opening, but not seeing the grounds of the mansion or Charles.

 _the book is tattered but it’s one of the three he got to bring from their home before they went into hiding, and he still cherishes it, even though it’s really a baby’s book. His mother picks it up after their supper – potatoes are plentiful, thank God, and they have eaten well tonight – and gestures with her head to the threadbare chair in the corner of the room. He makes a show of being embarrassed, but finally heads to the foot of the thing, curling up against his mother’s legs and letting her read the fairy tale about the girl and the apple and the woodsman to him again._

 _He can feel the warmth of her legs through his shirt, can feel his heart thumping along with the story even though he knows it by heart, can feel her hand in his hair as she strokes it absently as she reads._

 _His father bustles around quietly, and his belly is full and his family is here, together, and they are warm and today it did not rain._

 _‘the huntsman took up his axe, and made for the woods, as fast as his legs could carry him – ’_

Erik’s eyes see the grounds of the mansion now, and the eyes of Charles Xavier, who slowly lets go of his wrist, although he stays where he is, not afraid at all, it seems. His eyes are full as Erik’s are, and they stare at each other as though - _you’re not alone, Erik._

Slow closing of lids – Erik’s tears spill over his cheeks; he doesn’t remember crying this much since Herr Doktor had been his only _friend_. He’s not sure if he should hate it or not. Things are different now, different than the path he’s led for so long he can’t fathom another existence. But here he is, and he’s living a different existence than the plan.

No more pictures tracing the bastards that took his childhood from him, or where to find them, or what will happen to them when he does. A life with Charles and the children, a life of recruiting, training, saving the world, making the humans see that they can be the better men.

A pipe dream; Charles’ dream, not his. But Erik is willing, for a few precious moments at least, to forgo the darkness he wraps himself in like a cloak – no stars, just black, black sky. He can do that for Charles, even if he knows it’s probably a lie. A big lie, the biggest, but he imagines it anyway, for Charles.

He reaches out a hand and wipes the tears off Charles’ high cheekbone, gathering the wetness there on his thumb and fingers. Charles doesn’t speak, merely weeps silently, even as he smiles. Erik leans forward and presses his lips to Charles’ forehead, a thank you, a gift, a benediction that comes from the one place in Erik that isn’t scarred, and now belongs permanently to Charles.


End file.
